


Shared, Halved, Doubled, Better

by blcwriter



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, implied past (unspecified) trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4230516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'<i>Oh</i>.'  It was a sound of the same relief that you'd felt that first time and your heart squeezed tightly.  You couldn't share the memory even with Bones, but you could share the cure."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared, Halved, Doubled, Better

You know you're getting "better," whatever the hell that means, just by the sheer passage of time and the way your interactions with people have changed. You've done all the reading, from clinical textbooks to first-hand accounts, anything to give you some internal insight-- and they helped you think through some of it and rationalize some of the worst reactions away. But you're not going to talk about it, ever. You know it's stubborn, that you are one hundred percent holding up your further "recovery," whatever the hell that means, but you can't _won't shouldn't_ ever talk about it to anyone. No one believed you when you tried before, and now there's too much mythos, too much bravado, too much persona and reputation and reliance in others' image of you to ever admit this particular weakness. Plus, it was too raw, even now, to say it aloud. You'd bleed to death or die from the shock of exposing those wounds to the air if you did. People depend on you-- and while it's fine to admit to physical frailty every once in a while, this is different. And "recovery" is a relative term. Is it ever really possible to get over something like that? No-- because if you take the memories away, then it changes who you are because that experience no longer forms who you are. And you are someone people rely on, someone people look up to-- someone people need-- that comes from what happened, no matter how much you hate the past and yourself. You like that being relied upon-- you need it, have to have it like air. It's the opposite of emotionally healthy, but that same need lets you protect them because you are not going to let _anything_ happen to people who think you can help them. You _will_ prevent every damned bit of harm that you can.  
  
But yes, you're "better." You don't feel the need to punch everyone who disagrees with you or says you don't know what you're talking about. You don't see his _their his their_ faces every time you get in a fight like you used to, so that your ferocity-- face it, your practically berserker insanity-- lets you keep fighting beyond the point at which anyone else would have hurt too much to keep going. The adrenaline of fury and fear fueled you in those fights. That hormonal response still works, a physical habit and response that's so ingrained that it doesn't matter that you can now focus on who it is you're actually fighting-- you still don't really feel the pain that makes you incapable of getting up until after. During? You're mostly separate from the pain even as your body stalls on your brain, that disconnect between getting your feet back under you and getting in the next blow. Dissociation for the greater good and all that-- you won't give up because you're just fucking crazy _enough_ to fight through it without breaking.

And yes, you've stopped needing to fuck everything that breathes oxygen, because you've sublimated that need into something more socially acceptable. Sublimation, that's what the books say. You say it's throwing your arms around something you can hold and that doesn't push you away when you hang on, try to protect, try to support and boost and supplement until every success of someone you help is a feedback loop for your ego. Ship. Crew. Friends. They let you suppress the rest of the damage by channeling that leakthrough fear and rage and insecurity into something acceptable. These days, a good workout in the gym-- a good workout for you, "punishing" to anyone else and one that you now do at the end of delta shift because the crew stares at you when you're still going at it an hour and a half in-- tends to suffice to channel those energies. Your mythos of invincibility is actually part of a careful plan to make yourself so tired that you can sleep the four and half hours you've trained your body to accept so that you don't get so far into your REM cycle that the memories come back.

Because they're memories, not dreams. Nightmares, hah. Nightmares are combinations of imagination and memory, transformed into some subconscious manifestation of fears for the future that are supposed to clue you in to how to avoid those situations in the future. Sometimes. Or to clue you in to the fact that you need to revisit the fear in a more secure environment so you can work through them and "heal," whatever the fuck that means. These things that wake you are not imagination.

It's the memory of the _afterward_ , not the during, that comes to you in sleep when it's been a horrible day with too much death and blood and smoke everywhere, the loud and soft sounds of pain that brings them. Drinking works-- sometimes-- but these days you feel too fucking responsible to start alpha shift hungover and there are times when drinking simply isn't and option. In any event, it's a bad example for the crew, and you can no longer afford to be the irresponsible jackass who pulls success out of his hungover ass. It's no longer just your ass on the line anymore, and no matter how much it hurts you wouldn't change it for the world, no matter how tired you get.

You've "recovered" enough now that the memory only comes on after battle-- war-- hand to hand fighting on godforsaken planets you wished your ship had never discovered but who need discovery the most for the sake of the Federation's peacekeeping and civilizing influence. The memory comes on, provoked by those things that you're good at because of the way your experience lets you _know_ like a fucking psychic where the next shot of photon torpedo or archaic projectile, the next blow from some body part, the next swing of staff or sword is going to come from-- the memory informs how you just know how many blows you can absorb until it's not that the shields are blown as it is when life support's about to fail. Too, it's the source of your knowledge of when is the right time, the critical moment, that _now now now now aim shoot fire kick whatever it takes now now now now_ so you, your ship, your crew come out on top, bloody and hurting but breathing. Most of the time. Collateral damage always has you staring at the bottom of the bottle, the one time you'll switch shifts with Spock so you start at delta and cover gamma while you get drunk enough to forget, just for a few hours, the ache in your chest where sometimes your heart is. Spock never raises an eyebrow when you make that shift change.

Today was a horrible day and you can't even drink. You have to confer with the Admiralty tomorrow by subspace communication at the top of alpha shift-- the Romulans don't fucking care about the Neutral Zone when it comes to fringe worlds anymore and there is going to be more and more war, more days like today. Looking like shit because half your face got pulped in when you finally took down that warbird commander is one thing. Reeking so strongly of bourbon even after a shower that they can smell it back on Earth if they try is another. You'd laid down for a bit and fell into a sleep that seemed to end as soon as it started because there you were in memory, the afterward time.

The afterward time-- the red and black noise and feel of pain consuming every part of your body, your pulse hammering in your ears-- the black of an eye swollen shut-- the red of blood that keeps running in your eyes-- the pulsing red and black light inside your eyelids in time with your pulse and the burning hot pain that throbs in time with your heartbeat until the pain's in your blood, permanently-- the black way your vision wavers when you can keep your eyes open, what you see fading and emerging like when you're wading through smoke-- that's the memory, all of it. It's the feel of being helpless and hopeless afterward that comes to you until it's just the roaring of blood in your ears and the sound of whimpers of pain that can't come from you because they sound so fucking _broken_ \-- that's what you remember because the collateral damage, those crew members dead and wounded, those innocents slaughtered because you weren't enough _strong enough fast enough smart enough_ to get there in time and do what was needed, that's what brings them on, that's what reminds your that you started off weak and worthless and still are. Sometimes. Not all the time. That's what you know means you're "better." You don't think you're worthless all the time.

Tonight, though. It's red and it's black and it's hot and it just _throbs_ until that's all that you are.

\----

  
You'd discovered the temporary cure for the possessing memory inadvertently, working with Scotty in dry dock when you first got back to Earth after the Narada because as the last Captain, you were responsible for repairs. The memory came back every night after you set foot back on Earth and had time to sleep again. Before then, you'd lived on two hours of sleep and stimulant drinks, even though Bones practically strangled you-- and even then, those two how naps were pushing it those whole eight days limping home. Shields were down and life support was always on the verge of failing-- it called for your special "gift," if that was what you could call that primal and insanely tenacious survival instinct, your ability to hold things together on the brink of utterly broken. On your first tour through the ship once the crew and the injured and the Vulcans were offloaded, after you'd made your first reports to Starfleet Command, after you'd seen the dead to their families and gave your condolences, Scotty walked you through the engine room, both of you with your PADDs-- he showed you what had to be done, what he needed you to approve, ending your trip at the impulse engines.

"Aye, these are the lurvely ladies what got us home, Captain _,_ " he'd said, a sweet and possessive smile on his face as he ran his hand over the smooth skin of the engine. _"_ Don' get me wrong, I love the warp drives in a way most would call more'n a mite queer, but these impulse ladies, they'll nigh indestructible, totally solid. They'll get you home in all but the worst o' disasters, they're what runs our larger and equally lurvely lady when everything else's gone to shite." As you'd watched while he spoke and caressed the engine casing, the lines of tension in his face smoothed as he nodded at you, granting some kind of permission-- curiously, wonderingly, your hand had stretched out and pressed onto the stainless steel skin.

A humming, pulsing buzz that was a slow rhythmic heartbeat. A vibration that washed over you, head to toe, invading every cell of your body. White, cool, pure.

You'd jerked away, shocked, gasping.

"Aye, laddie," Scotty had said. He'd worn the smile people had when they'd just shared their most precious secret with someone they knew would understand. "Feel it, do ye? Thought ye might."

Your hand found the skin again and that silent white noise, that cool even _thrum_ that realigned every cell in your body until even your breath and heartbeat slowed in time with the engine, it became you-- or you became it-- again. You resisted the urge to plaster your body to the curve of the engine with everything in you.  
  
You imagine you'd looked like you'd gotten the best gift of your life and that you'd been hit in the back of the head with a board all at once. It felt like it.  
  
"Mine," you'd breathed, and Scotty'd smiled that smile again.  
  
"Wael, aye, but ours, too" he'd said. "I'll share it wi' ye." He'd laughed then, a bubbling joyful noise. "Lots o' good crew here, Captain, ye've got a right keen crew I can work wi', who've got the right love o'gears and grease and all those parts as'll get us home. But I haven't seen a one o'them know _this_."  
  
You'd breathed deeply in time with the engine, eyes closed, as Scotty kept speaking. "Ye've a different way o'knowin' what she can take than I do, laddie, but ye know it _inside,_ don't ye?" With a confidential grin, he'd reached out and poked you firmly, once, in the chest, and for the first time since you'd remembered what those interspace lightning storms meant-- _not fast enough to save Vulcan--_ you'd really smiled and then really laughed, that same joy bubbling out of your throat. Scotty, his own hand stroking that smooth surface again, had joined you.  
  
Eventually, you'd both stopped and both pulled away, the separation almost painful even as that cool thrum still settled you back in your skin. "Och, lettin' go never gets easier," Scotty'd said, seeing whatever it was on your face. "But ye can always come back, since these ladies are nigh indestructible."  
  
There hadn't been more to say than "Thank you, Mr. Scot," but the answering grin on his face was more than enough.  
  
"Anytime, laddie, anytime."

\----

  
"Are you ever going to tell me why?"  
  
The voice felt far off but you heard it, so you opened your eyes to look up at Bones from where you sat on the floor in the furthest corner of the largest impulse engine, your back to its curative skin.  
  
Lights were at fifty percent since it was gamma shift and there were only two techs on in the control room, so his face was partially shadowed as he looked down at you. Even in shadow, though, you could see those same carven lines of tiredness and grief that all your senior crew bore. Bones' lines were deeper than the others' though, just like yours-- he'd lost the ones he _knew_ were his special charge just like you had, your charges more than anyone else's. His voice was rougher and bore that faint tinge of hurt he got when he knew you _hurt_ but couldn't and wouldn't talk to him about it when the two of you talked about almost everything else now, older and wiser as you both were almost a year out on your mission.  
  
"No," you said carefully.  
  
"I might actually be able to help," he said sadly. "It's not just today, is it." It wasn't a question-- it was a statement of fact.  
  
You'd thought about what you would say if he ever came out and asked you, stopped avoiding the several things you each honored by not asking about.  
  
"You can't fix everything, Bones. I don't mean you-- I mean anyone. Sometimes help gets there too late, you know, and no matter how many times you rebreak a bone or do reconstructive surgery or try out new treatments, some things stay scarred and don't work the way they're supposed to. You know that, and you just do what you can and work around it, right? Prescribe therapies and painkillers that make the worst of it stop hurting so much that you can keep going until it stops flaring up so much, right? And if you're lucky, sometimes the therapies work well enough that the flare-ups aren't as bad or as frequent over time. You can make things a lot better than they might have been otherwise, but some things won't always heal, not completely, no matter how hard you try."  
  
Bones jolted a bit at your medical analogy, but you'd thought long and hard about how to explain to him because you knew there'd be a time when he wouldn't be able to stop from asking, and you wanted him to understand.  
  
"Right." His agreement was half-strangled, but he didn't argue with you-- he didn't when he knew you were telling the truth. The lines on his face got even deeper as he accepted that truth and it _hurt_ on top of the rest of it to know that you'd told him there was something he couldn't fix, that he couldn't prevent, just like you hated knowing that there were things beyond you, things you were helpless and hopeless against. He felt the same way about loss that you did. You knew it haunted him and brought up some memory different than yours that hurt the same way-- and that need to not _lose_ was something you both shared with a passion, the same way Scotty felt about each short and malfunction and nonworking part.  
  
Looking up, you wondered and cursed yourself at the same time for not thinking of it before.  
  
"Sit," you said, patting the floor next to you.  
  
Stiffly and slowly, as tired as you were, he folded himself down to the base of the engine, watching you to see what you wanted.  
  
"Lean back," you said, pushing him back into the engine with your hand over his heart-- and oh, you were right.  
  
He jerked back, gasping, wide-eyed.  
  
"Do it again," you said, hand still over his heart and pushing him back. "Close your eyes this time."  
  
You watched as it washed over him, the shock yielding to the smoothing, soothing pulse of the engine.  
  
"Oh." It was a sound of the same relief that you'd felt that first time and your heart squeezed tightly. You couldn't share the memory even with Bones, but you could share the cure.  
  
"Just breathe with it," you said, leaning back and watching him still, watching that same cooling throb take him over.  
  
You should have shared this with Bones a long time ago, but maybe it wasn't meant to be shared until you could tell that someone needed it so much that it was the only thing that might possibly work. Maybe that was what Scotty had seen in you that day, when you'd honestly felt like one more night of that memory would push you over that edge you'd so far managed to stay just short of.  
  
As you watched him, something else lightened inside you, probably that same feeling Scotty had knowing that someone else felt it. _Pain shared is pain halved._  
  
Watching that look on his face, deciding, you shifted and pressed-- shoulder to shoulder, side to side, outstretched legs touching as you grabbed his hand tightly. He blinked his eyes open and gave you that same smile of learning such a wonderful secret that you must have had when Scotty'd said " _Aye, laddie_."  
  
"Yeah, Bones."  
  
"Mine," he said. He meant it the same way you'd meant it back with Scotty-- not that you wanted to not share it with anyone, just that it was something special to you that you could wrap your arms around, that you could have when you needed it.  
  
"Yeah, but ours, too." You laughed at the smile on his face and he joined you until the rhythm of the engine soaked through you again and he looked as temporarily younger as you felt. The pulse would fade and you'd return to your everyday self, but you could always come back when being yourself was too much.  
  
He smiled again and squeezed your hand back before closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the smooth, cooling casing, so you did the same.  
  
In time, you breathed and your heart beat in time with the impulse, and your impulse let you breathe and your heart beat in time with Bones'.  
  
Pain shared, pain halved, happiness doubled when he squeezed your hand again.  
  
_Double or nothing._  
  
You leant over and kissed him, running on impulse. He kissed back and smiling, you pushed him back against the engine again, still holding his hand.  
  
Your eyes closed, back against the engine and body in contact with Bones, you breathed out again feeling doubled-- feeling better.  



End file.
